AI BriefingChina Struggles to Recruit Foreign AI Researchers Despite US Hiring Restrictions
Key point
A Carnegie Endowment study found that for every 30 Chinese AI researchers in the US, only one moved to China in 2025.
Details
China has prioritized recruiting international AI scientists through new visas and lucrative grants, yet foreign researchers are not arriving in significant numbers. This struggle contrasts with the United States, where the Trump administration has made hiring foreign researchers more difficult.
Despite geopolitical tensions, the number of Chinese-origin researchers working in the US actually rose by four percentage points compared to three years ago. A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyzed papers from the NeurIPS conference to track these trends.
The data reveals a stark imbalance in talent flow: for every 30 Chinese AI researchers in the United States in 2025, only one made the opposite journey to China. This suggests that US institutions remain more attractive to top-tier AI talent than China’s current incentives.
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